…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

The Best Sites To Learn About U.S. Presidential Elections

Since I’m teaching a Government class this semester for Intermediate English Language Learners, I thought it would be helpful to identify accessible websites that might help students learn about the U.S. Presidential elections and the candidates. And, so, another “The Best…” list is born!

Here are the best ones I’ve found and used:

There’s no question in my mind that the National Mock Election Game is the best site for English Language Learners. It has a fair amount of audio support for text. Intermediate ELL’s should be able to play it.

There are a number of short online “quizzes” that users can complete to identify which candidate or political party is the best fit for them. The ones related to the candidates also includes ones that have dropped-out, but I still think the exercise is an educational one. The most accessible ones are the Political Party Predictor from Channel One and USA Today’s Candidate Match Game.

After students develop some background knowledge about how the Presidential elections work, it might be useful to spend a little time on the electoral college. 270 To Win has a lot of information displayed graphically about previous Presidential elections and what polls are saying now about the upcoming election. In addition, The Washington Post has an Electoral College Prediction Map where users can predict what the 2008 results will look like and save their predictions for posting on a blog or online journal.

Lastly, I should at least mention an excellent online game developed by Cable In The Classroom called eElections. However, it’s probably only accessible to very advanced English Language Learners.

Readers know that “Brainpop” has made many of my “The Best…” lists and is one of only two sites I recommend that is not free-of-charge. However, they’ve just made a collection of their movies available related to Election 08. They are free and don’t require any registration.

Yahoo’s Political Dashboard is a very well-designed and accessible electoral map for this year’s U.S. Presidential elections. It has a number of neat features worth checking-out.

Inside The Issues is an excellent and very accessible resource from Time For Kids that describes various issue positions held by the two presidential candidates.

USA Today has a great online activity called The Candidate Match Game. It’s a very visual and accessible way for users to indicate their position on a variety of issues and then be “matched” with the U.S. Presidential candidate who most reflects their positions.

The Commission on Presidential Debates has teamed up with MySpace to create a great site called My Debates. It’s an exceptional interactive and educational tool to help users identify positions held on different issues by the candidates and assist people to identify which candidate is closer to their own beliefs. It’s a wonderful place to learn about the U.S. Presidential election,

Too bad it’s on MySpace. Even though you don’t have to be a MySpace member to use it (there’s a place to click so you can use it as a “guest”), it’s connect to the MySpace domain. That pretty much eliminates most public schools in the United States from accessing it, since content filters won’t allow it through.

Compare The Candidates comes from The Boston Channel and is an accessible interactive comparing the two main U.S. Presidential candidates. On that same page you can find additional features about the election.

Where They Stand… is an online interactive from The Sacramento Bee which compares and contrasts the various positions of Barack Obama and John McCain. The language is short and simple. The display is helpful, too, since it’s done in the form of a Venn Diagram and demonstrates where they share common ground, too.

See How They Run is a very accessible and informative interactive from ABC News. Based on their recent polls, it shows what percentages of likely voters from various groups (race, religion, etc.) would vote for which candidate.

Here’s another excellent slideshow from Time Magazine about what’s happening in the United States on election day.

The excellent Famous People Lessons site has a new Barack Obama Lesson Plan. You can listen to the information about President-Elect Obama first, and then students can click on “Online Exercise.” It also has a number of activities you can print-out.

Thanks for giving your time and energy for working hard to select those sights for the upcoming presidential election. It will be essential tools specially form the youth to know all about the system of election and at the same time most important for them to
vote in this crucial election. Thanks again.
Beat Long Poll Lines with Absentee Ballots from StateDemocracy.org
Many state and local election officials are encouraging voters to use Absentee Ballots to avoid the long lines and delays expected at the polls on November 4th due to the record-breaking surge in newly registered voters.
Voters in most states still have time to obtain an Absentee Ballot by simply downloading an official application form available through http://www.StateDemocracy.org, a completely FREE public service from the nonprofit StateDemocracy Foundation.
Read More: http://us-2008-election.blogspot.com/2008/10/beat-long-poll-lines-with-absentee.html

Wow! My first ESL student would like to discuss the US elections and I was browsing the web and came across your website. A Godsend I should say! Such a wealth of information and now, I feel relieved to learn of so many websites to draw information from or to recommend to the student.

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